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TANGO HELL

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When I tell people I live in Valentín Alsina, they either nod or look at me quizzically. Porteños look at me like, “I’m sorry.” Foreigners have never heard of it. But from those who also live on my side of the greater metropolitan area of Buenos Aires, I get smiles.

Puente Alsina, as seen from the capital

Puente Alsina, gateway to my neighborhood. Puente Alsina crosses the Matanza River, commonly known as el Riachuelo, separating the city of Buenos Aires from the province of Buenos Aires. The Riachuelo is dreadfully polluted. The most contaminated river in Argentina, so they say. Makes me want to cry.

Once a thriving part of the great metropolis, Valentín Alsina has seen better days.

Puente Alsina seen from Valentín Alsina

downtown Valentin Alsina

Valentín Alsina is a street artist’s paradise. Images and opinions get right in your face.

This one says it all. No client = no business.

Ex-President Cristina Fernández de Kirchner is still a favorite in this working class district.

Young family with a couple of fuzzy friends.

Do you believe in creating your own reality? Don’t we all? There’s a Coliseum on the this side of Rome.

Create your own reality now, before someone else creates it for you. If you don’t like the news, go out and make some of your own!

Need a little help with the remodel?

“Wabi means that which fails to satisfy, wholly refuses to submit to one’s aims, and goes against what was wished. Take to heart that wabi is not considering one’s incapacities, nor even embracing the thought that being ill-provided for is in any way out of the order of things.” the Zencharoku, 1828

Bandoneon and bajo… the wabi and sabi of Tango.

Tango is the beating heart of Buenos Aires.

They call this el Muro Sur (the southern wall). You drive right past it after crossing Puente Alsina.

Abandoned factory…

meets lonely playground.

Pretty flowers and bright happy calacas remind me of Califas.

I like to imagine that some talented neighborhood kids did this fabulous copy of Picasso’s Guernica. I spotted it a few months ago, walking around looking for the Alsina cultural center.

German aviation forces bombed the Basque town of Guernica on April 26, 1937, during the Spanish Civil War. “Guernica had no military or strategic importance, and thus provoked a popular reaction against the absurd sacrifice of innocents.” [culturagenial.com]

This is my neighborhood. I think it’s pretty nice. I’m a fan of all things wabi-sabi.

The wabi-sabi ruin below is just a block away. Definitely a scene stealer. I hope somebody remodels soon. Perfect set for an action sequence in a nitty-gritty urban thriller… am I right?

Wabi originally meant ‘sadness of poverty.’ But gradually it came to mean an attitude toward life, with which one tried to resign himself to straitened living and to find peace and serenity of mind even under such circumstances.” Diane Durston, Wabi Sabi.

When it rains in Valentín Alsina, it pours. Last year my neighborhood flooded.

Too close to the river, I guess. Below, a block from Santos’ house:

That green stuff in the foreground is the grass between the street and the sidewalk. Flooding gives me the creeps. Whoever’s in charge of water management infrastructure hereabouts (levees, spillways, floodwater diversion systems) has been sleeping on the job for the last fifty years… and stashing those big checks in some offshore account. Panamá, Caymans, New Orleans?

What’s all this talk about diverting cash flows? When you lose buying power to massive inflation, or get charged 40-70% interest on your home loan cause you missed one payment… you must be in Argentina. Argentines pay taxes and get NOTHING in return. Broken dirty streets and sidewalks, broken sewage systems, inefficient wastewater treatment plants, ancient power grids… kind of like Venezuela, I guess.

Retirement pensions were cut 15% in 2018, and the government of Macri is considering another cut in 2019. That’s money people earned and saved… what kind of idiot thinks he has the right? Macri is such an imbécil, like his fellow Emperor Has No Clothes Trump. Hmmm… maybe that’s why there was a fiery picket line blocking Puente Alsina when I was heading home yesterday.

Picket Line on Puente Alsina

This Monday and Tuesday there were paros (work stoppages). Subways and collectivos (buses) were grounded both days. People survive by ridesharing with others who have cars. But no vehicle was going to cross Puente Alsina this afternoon; picketers lit fires at both ends.

Flashback from a New York Times reporter: “Back this month for the first time in 16 years, I saw a country stuck in what has now become its natural state: crisis. As if living a déja vu, I flipped on the TV to once again hear Argentine newscasters fretting about bailouts, the peso in freefall, and fears of default. Many stores advertised going-out-of-business sales. Still more storefronts were shuttered and empty, with For Rent or For Sale signs.”

“Consider the recent Group of 20 summit that drew global leaders to Buenos Aires, including President Trump. The Argentines erected a glamorous media center for an army of press. They filled it with avant-garde art and offered unlimited wine on tap, craft beers, fresh pastas and rare cuts of Argentine beef. They staged edgy performances – a sort of tango show, as if produced by Andy Warhol. – … Yet for the vast majority of the summit, the wifi – the most fundamental necessity for working journalists – was offline. Broken. Didn’t work.” – Anthony Faiola, New York Times, 27 Dec. 2018.

Welcome to Argentina. Sounds like Burning Man. No desert playground here, but we have our own Burning Man.

Who’s your Daddy?

Sorry, no avant-garde art or craft beers out here in the stix… but Don Tito cooks up the best asado in Valentín Alsina. Sit back and enjoy an adult beverage while I relate my Cliff’s Notes style version of local history:

General José Maria Paz

Lanús, the bigger city next door to Valentín Alsina, essentially a suburb, was established as Villa General Paz in 1888, named after numerous battles captained and won by General José María Paz in the Argentine civil wars of the mid-19th century.

Villa General Paz was officially renamed Lanús in 1955, in honor of Hipólito Anacarsis Lanús (1820-1888), a settler of Basque origin, who helped found the city.

Hipólito Anacarsis Lanús

Lanús dedicated himself to importing goods from Europe, and made a fortune supplying the war effort against Paraguay in the latter part of the 1860s. Paraguayan troops had occupied the city of Corrientes in 1865, thus persuading Argentina to enter the war as an ally of Brazil and Uruguay, who were already fighting the Paraguayans. [La Defensa, Diario Digital, 24 Dec. 2016]

Lanús was one of a group of wealthy men who helped Bartolomé Mitre start up the newspaper La Nación in 1870. It’s still one of the most widely read papers in Argentina, although perhaps not the most respected. Lanús later became a provincial Senator, and vastly enriched his fortunes provisioning the armies who obliterated the indigenous peoples in the south of the province. He’s no hero in my book. Bad karma.

What goes around, comes around.

The geography of what is now Valentín Alsina and Lanús, with a navigable river flowing into the Río de la Plata and hence to the Atlantic, precipitated the intense growth and commercial development of Lanús. Those in a position to profit could see that it would not be long before the huddled masses of the second half of the nineteenth century would be arriving: people from other latitudes and hemispheres, with other experiences and knowledge, other cultures and languages. All of them looking for a place to put down roots. The soil was generous, the sun smiled upon the land, and the river linked the new city to the sea, assuring the progress of some … but not all. Sound familiar?

Lanús wasn’t always as rundown as it is today. In the 1940s, Lanús was still mostly fields, creeks and trees. Lots more people arrived when the meatpackers opened: Frigoríficos Wilson and La Negra.

The canneries employed so many people there were 3 shifts a day. Frigorífico Wilson built a ballroom in Valentín Alsina, where workers danced on Saturday nights and Sunday afternoons.

A downtown was built; streetcars were assembled and rolled onto new rails. Cars were still scarce in those days, while horse-drawn wagons were everywhere.

Practically every enterprising business made deliveries by wagon. Horse-drawn carts are now prohibited by law, but I still see a few around Valentín Alsina. Fueled by necessity, post-industrial creativity flourishes.

Who are the cartoneros? Mostly skinny men and an occasional woman, pulling a jury-rigged metal-framed cart, collecting used cardboard to sell to recyclers for a few pennies. I’ve never seen a well-fed cartonero. Recently I saw a cartonero loading a beat-up pickup. Civilization and Progress.

a local dairy from back in the day

Someone once asked Gandhi what he thought of Western civilization. “It would be a good idea,” he replied.

Now a major industrial center, Lanús is served by freight and passenger railway lines. The city has chemical, armaments, textiles, paper, leather and rubber goods, wire, apparel, oils and lubricants industries, as well as tanneries, vegetable and fruit canneries. Primary and secondary schools, as well as several technical schools, are located in the city, as well as the Hospital Eva Perón, one of the largest in the Greater Buenos Aires area. Lanús has a football club, Club Atlético Lanús, currently playing in the Argentina Primera Liga.

Argentina won the World Cup in 1978. Argentines like to fight so much at soccer games that only one side of the stadium will let fans out after a match. The other side has to wait at least an hour before they are allowed to leave; and all the bars and liquor stores within a mile are shut down. I know; been there, done that. Last November a couple of Boca players received eye injuries from broken glass when some River fans threw rocks at their bus, as they pulled up outside the River stadium. The match had to be rescheduled, and finally took place in the Santiago Barnabéu stadium in Madrid. Argentines are passionate about their sports… and they’ve produced some of the best players in the world.

Messi, Argentine God of soccer

Another Argentine passion is Tango. You knew we’d be getting to that, right? Following is a compilation of Santos’ favorite tango singers from Valentín Alsina.

Above, Tango singer Mercedes Simone, 1904-1990. Following, one of Santos’ favorite singers, Hector Varela, a local from the Lanús area.

Hector Varela (1914-1987) was a bandoneon player and composer of tangos who joined the orchestra of Juan D’Arienzo as first bandoneón in 1934. Legend has it that Tita Merello and Libertad Lamarque, Argentine singers and actresses, asked Varela to accompany them. Varela’s parents wanted him to become an accountant. He graduated with an accounting degree, but never worked a day as a numbers cruncher. In 1935 he joined the orchestra of Enrique Santos Discépolo, where he met Aníbal Troilo, another almighty god of Tango.

Cuando Troilo toca, Dios habla. When Troilo plays, God speaks.

An image of Troilo on the screen at Milonga Marabú

In 1939 Varela briefly formed his own orchestra, but then returned to the orchestra of Juan d’Arienzo, “el Rey del Compás,” and stayed there for 10 years. He formed his own group again in 1951, and over the years recorded 383 tangos with singers Armando Laborde and Argentino Ledesma, among others.

Another superstar from Valentín Alsina was Sandro, a singer and songwriter. (1945 – 2010) Sandro sang rock, pop, and ballads. Not just any ol’ musician, Sandro went on to become a well-known actor, producer, and director. He recorded 52 albums, selling more than 8 million, and starred in 16 movies.

Sandro on the far right, at a birthday party

Sandro won a Grammy in 2005. He was the first Argentine pop singer to perform at Madison Square Garden, and is dearly beloved to this day. Sandro’s star status enabled him to buy a mansion in Banfield, near Lanús, where he installed a recording studio, and lived there until he passed away in 2010. A statue of Sandro inhabits a nearby park here in Valentín Alsina.

Sandro

Edmundo Rivero, (1911-1986) singer, guitarist and composer, was born in Valentín Alsina. Rivero trained in classical music at the National Conservatory in Belgrano. A friend said he was “…a character straight out of the Quixote, born in the Pampas.” Edmundo Rivero had a deep, gravelly voice, and an unmistakable style. In 1935 Rivero joined the orchestra of Julio de Caro. In the 1940s he sang with Canaro. Later he sang with other orchestras, including Horacio Salgán and Aníbal Troilo.

“Look, Rivero, you better get off the stage, they’re starting to throw things.”

“You think so?”

“Can’t you see they’re throwing stuff at us?”

“Yeah, that’s how they always applaud me.”

“Are you sure, Rivero?”

Alberto Morán (1922-1997)

Born in Italy, Morán emigrated to Buenos Aires with his family when he was 3 years old. Morán made his singing debut in 1940 in the famous café El Nacional, known as la Cathedral of Tango (not to be confused with la Nacional, on Adolfo Alsina, or la Catedral in Almagro, or la Catedral in Mataderos). Morán really made star status when he joined the orchestra of Osvaldo Pugliese, in 1944. Some of his most famous songs include “Pasional,” “San José de Flores,” and “El abrojito,”​ which is a kind of thorn that pierces your heart.

Tito Reyes(1928-2007)

Tito Reyes con Troilo

Tito Reyes was born Tito Cosme Sconza in the Puente Alsina neighborhood. He and his six brothers were raised by Italian immigrant parents in a house his father built; wooden with a metal roof, the typical immgrant house of the period. The Sconza family home was elevated 1-1/2 meters above the ground, because the barrio of Valentín Alsina floods frequently due to storms.

No kidding

Tito grew up listening to the radio. He taught himself to sing, listening to Carlos Gardel on Radio Colonia. Tito apprenticed as a shoemaker, and later worked in construction and as a welder.Tito never quit working; he didn’t think that singing in cafés was a real job. Eventually, though, he must have wrapped his mind around the idea of becoming a professional singer, because in the early 1950s he began to use Tito Reyes as his artistic name.

The rains always end, sooner or later. The sky clears, the sun comes out, and lovely clouds come riding in on the sunset like a live fire-breathing dragon.

from my balcony

Seriously, how can you worry when you have a dragon like Smaug hanging around?

Saints need sinners. Otherwise, they’d be out of a job.

Jus’ having a little fun. Hope you’all are too. Over and out from Buenos Aires.

The city of Córdoba, capital of the province of Córdoba, Argentina, was founded on July 6, 1573 by Jerónimo Luis de Cabrera, a Spanish conquistador. Cabrera named the city after Córdoba, Spain. Córdoba was one of the first Spanish colonial capitals of the region that is now Argentina (the oldest city is Santiago del Estero, founded in 1553). The U of Córdoba is the oldest university in the country and the second oldest in Latin America. It was founded by the Jesuits in 1613.

Córdoba has many historical monuments preserved from Spanish colonial rule.The most recognizable is perhaps the Jesuit Quarter (la Manzana Jesuíta), declared a UNESCO World Heritage Site in 2000.

This beautiful barrio consists of a group of buildings dating from the 17th century, including the Colegio Nacional de Monserrat and the colonial university campus.

recova Plaza San Martín

In January we flew up north to the province of Córdoba. The original Córdoba, in Andalusia, Spain, was built by the Romans and conquered by Muslim armies in 711. Córdoba became the capital of the Islamic Emirate and the Caliphate of Córdoba, which included a great swath of the Iberian Peninsula, not to mention my favorite Andalusian cities: Granada, Málaga, Sevilla. According to archeologists, Córdoba had upwards of a million inhabitants in the 10th century, in a time when only one other European city had more than 30,000: Constantinople.

Córdoba was famously cultured, enlightened and stunningly beautiful, and is credited, as I will illustrate, with jumpstarting the Renaissance.The city was known for its gardens, fountains, artificial lakes and public baths fed by an aqueduct.Muslims bathed daily, unlike their fragrant European neighbors who were averse to cleanliness, and instead resorted to the invention of perfume.

General San Martín

During these centuries, Córdoba became a society ruled by Muslims, in which all other groups had second-class status but lived together in relative peace and poverty except for the noble classes, who were exempt from paying taxes. Spain returned to Christian rule in 1236, during the Reconquista. In 1492 Fernando and Isabella, los Reyes Católicos, forced all the Muslims, Jews, gypsies and other “deplorables” out of the country in the name of Catholicism. (Many converted to Christianity to avoid being deported: losconversos) The ebb and flow of tolerance seems to be a recurring pattern worldwide. We humans just can’t seem to rise above the avarice, ego, and drive to dominate others, which is apparently encoded in our DNA. History repeats itself.

Because of its enlightened rulers, Córdoba was home to a university, medical schools, a library of 400,000 volumes, and 27 free primary schools for children of the poor. The literacy rate was high for both males and females …. encouraged by a famous king, Alfonso X, el Sabio. Alfonso the “wise” was crowned in 1252. He is known for his interest in science and literature. Under his rule, early Greek and Roman texts (Homer, Herodotus, Aeschylus, Euripides, Sappho, Socrates, Plato, Aristotle, et al.) were translated into Castilian Spanish. Alfonso X sponsored, supervised and often participated with his own writing and in collaboration with a group of Latin, Hebrew and Muslim intellectuals known as the Toledo School of Translators, in the composition of an enormous body of literature that kick-started the production of literature in Spanish as we know it today.

Córdoba has many historical monuments preserved from Spanish colonial rule. The Colegio Nacional de Monserrat and the colonial university campus, as I have mentioned, all date from the 17th century. The campus belongs today to the historical museum of the National University of Córdoba, which has been the second-largest university in the country since the early 20th century (after the University of Buenos Aires), in terms of the number of students, faculty, and academic programs.

January and February is school-free summer vacation time here in the far southern latitudes. Trees are in blossom all over the place. The Córdoba countryside reminds me so much of California; the Santa Lucias, the Gabilanes, Los Padres, Ojai… Seeing Córdoba adds life and depth to an understanding of our California missions.

Isn’t she lovely?

a Dominican convent in the Jesuit quarter

Segue to the 20th century: a beautiful bronze bas-relief in the historic quarter of Córdoba, dedicated to the women of Córdoba. Just in time for International Women’s Day!

monument to the women of Cordoba, 1956

In case you might not know about or have forgotten about a very difficult period in Argentina, there is the Museo de la Memoria in Córdoba. The coup d’etat of March 1976 was a civic-military rebellion that led to the establishment of a military junta, led by Lieutenant General Jorge Rafael Videla.The junta called their state-sponsored terrorism the Process of National Reorganization.People called it “la Dictadura” and “el Proceso.”It was not the first, but by far the bloodiest dictatorship in the history of Argentina. [Wikipedia]

Museo de la Memoria

More than 30,000 people were “disappeared,” tortured and killed.The junta remained in power until December 10, 1983, when Raúl Alfonsín was elected president by free and fair elections.In Buenos Aires you will see many bronze plaques set into the sidewalks, in every neighborhood, where the names of the disappeared are listed, along with with the date they were kidnapped from their homes at that location.On the facade of the Museo de la Memoria are hand-lettered the names of those who were “disappeared” in Córdoba. I saw quite a lot of politically-inspired street art in Córdoba. People having a voice is what democracy is all about.

we want to live … we exist because we resist

El Cordobazo: a student – worker uprising against a previous dictatorship in 1969.

When reality gets too depressing, you have to just forget about it all, for a while. C’mon, let’s go dancing.

Saturday night Milonga in Plaza San Martín, Córdoba.

If you’ve got a bad case of the blues, and the Cathedral at Plaza San Martín is just too damn lovely, take a walk on the Goth side, near the Plaza España. It’s absolutely wild!

Gótica extremensus!

You would think this cathedal, la Iglesia del Sagrado Corazón, was built in the 1700s… that’s what I thought! I mean, it’s positively crawling with grotesque and beastly gargoyles. But I was soooo wrong, just like the Beatles’ song. Also known as the Iglesia de los Capuchinos (let’s just call it the Cappuchino church, even if it doesn’t have an espresso bar), it was built by the Franciscan order between 1926 – 1934.

Our first destination in Córdoba was La Cumbre, a pretty little town 500 miles northwest of Buenos Aires.We loved La Cumbre… we stayed there for a whole week. You can keep your yurts… La Cumbre is the best base camp anywhere. It’s friendly and picturesque, and the dozen or so sidewalk cafés and bistros serve up some really delicious food.How about a plate of crusted stuffed Patagonian trout?Rúcula and radicheta salad with caramelized pears and melted brie?We’re talking’ some really good eats in this town, not to mention the BBQ, the empanadas, and the quintessential malbec: in vino veritas!In La Cumbre the Tourism office doesn’t close till midnight.Argentines are all about their night life!

La Cumbre has a lovely willow-lined creek on the edge of town.

We discovered the creek while wandering about town the next morning, trying to find the 10K trail we were told about. It starts behind the statue of El Cristo Redentor and ends at the San Gerónimo reservoir.

It’s a 10 minute climb up a series of steps to get to the lookout.

Nice view of La Cumbre. The best part was getting to pet the adorable cuddly vicuña for 10 pesos.

The trailhead starts right behind the statue and we nearly missed it, but our new friends, las Gaby, pointed out what looked like a rabbit trail going straight up, a few feet from the backside of Christ. The four of us spent most of the day climbing with hands and feet up a narrow, rocky trail to the top of the ridge. Lush, grassy green hillsides with horses and burros grazing. My kind of paradise!

There was a cute burro hanging with the herd but he kept moving away and I couldn’t get a good shot. As we climbed up the views of La Cumbre just got better and better. Santos added the “the bear went over the mountain” to his repertoire of Latin American hiking music. After living in Buenos Aires for most of the last 6 years – that big beautiful cognitively-dissonant city that I love – it was delightful to be up in the hills with the sweet air, the fresh breeze. The warmth of the sun was absoutely glorious. A wonderfully healing and energizing day.

We had to ditch our sneakers and socks to ford a creek that was only a few inches deep. Our happy feet dried in the sun as we kicked back in the tall grass munching trail mix. We scrambled up faint paths on all fours, rock to rock, like, seriously climbing!On the downhills we scampered and skittered like clumsy goats, concentrating on each split-second landing, not afraid, but keenly aware of the possible unfortunate consequences of one poorly placed foot.Luckily I had brought along a good pair of hiking shoes, and with zen-like concentration I donned the spirit cloak of a mountain sprite.

We finally made it over the ridgetops and scrambled down, down, down to the San Gerónimo reservoir. The water was still a little muddy from recent rains.

Dique San Gerónimo after the rains

web photo: cobalt blue water!

a spillway: built to last!

It was about 4 pm when we made it to the reservoir. After a short break our 4-person team set off down the dirt road towards La Cumbre. Riders on horseback passed us ponying a mare with a colt skittering alongside. It was about a 4K walk into La Cumbre. After a while we turned onto the main road (also dirt) and to our right was a sight for sore eyes: la Estancia Rosario! It was a hot and sunny afternoon, and the gate was OPEN!

La estancia welcomed us with beautiful sweeping lawns, benches all over the place, a café, a restaurant, huge nice restrooms, and a shop that sells an enormous variety of alfajores (saddlebags in english). Alfajores are cookies sandwiched with jam or dulce de leche. Sometimes the cookie dough is made from almond paste and nuts, or breadcrumbs mixed with honey and spices. Speaking of breadcrumbs, I spent so much time in the ladies’ room washing off the sweat and trail dirt, and rebraiding my hair, that the team sent one of the Gabys to drag me out. Then I had to stock up on alfajores… dulce de leche is my favorite, dusted with coconut instead of dipped in chocolate. Estancia el Rosario makes the best alfajores I’ve ever had. Ah, alfajor heaven!

So, rested up, full tummy = happy heart. We set off to hike the last couple of miles into La Cumbre. Piece ‘a cake!Flat, no stones in my passway….

Robert Johnson, 1911-1938, King of the Delta Blues

A stray dog decided to join our wolf-pac.com. Maybe he liked the scent of dirt, dust and alfajores? After awhile he changed his mind and headed back to his comfort zone.… the familiar.He didn’t want anything weird to happen at the next crossroads. Happens to all of us at some point, right? If not, there may still be time…

After a day of climbing nearly vertical rabbit trails, walking on the flat was sooo easy. We were NOT complaining. But then, as if the universe wanted to applaud our efforts, we heard a vehicle approaching, bouncing and jolting its merry way along the washboard. We all turned to look. It was a white ’64 Ford pickup. Its driver spotted us and slowed down to have a look. Three women and one guy.The odds are good but the goods are odd!Just kidding, he was a good guy.There were 4 or 5 tires in the back of the truck which looked liked couch cushions to us.Santos spoke to him, he gave a nod, and we jumped in.

Gabriela la Morocha and Gabriela de Córdoba: las Gabys

Back in town, we celebrated under the umbrella of a sidewalk cafe downtown with Quilmes, empanadas and a spiked mango licuado for yours truly. Good times and best friends forever!!

Later on Santos and I drove to Cosquín to go to a peña.What’s a peña?It’s a club where you can sit and have a nice meal and a bottle of wine and listen to live folk music, and sometimes other local musical offerings.Santos was really jazzed to go to Cosquín, because it’s THE center of Argentine folk music and dance, and he’s way into all that.They have music festivals there all year round, and the biggest ones are broadcast live on Argentine public tv, night after night.

During the day they have rodeos where you can watch gauchos in Argentine style caps and sombreros ride outlaw bulls and broncs. It’s kinda funny for me cause, being a cowgirl myself, I’m used to American rodeos with clowns and dumb-ass announcers and lots of flag waving and team roping and steer wrestling, barrel racing and all the rest.In Argentina, especially in the provinces, they’ve got guys riding broncs and bulls with folk singers singing at the same time! Crazy!But that’s how it’s done here. Their rodeos are called domos.Later on, for the folks at home, the tv broadcasts hours of folk dancing, all in very elaborate and beautiful costumes, very much like our baile folklórico in California and Mexico.

dancing la Zamba at Peña La Salamanca

So that evening we went to la Peña Salamanca.The food was great (we had locro, a traditional corn and beef stew) and there was a stream of different groups performing… a dozen at least.It was the week leading up to the big festival weekend, so lots of performers were in town doing the rounds of the peñas.We got up and danced to the chacareras, and when a group played some Piazzolla, we were the only dancers brave enough to get out there and show our stuff.The audience went wild for us!! Blame it on that bottle of tinto we were drinking.

The fact that we were visiting “la Salamanca” made Santos spill the stories his mom told him when he was little, about the Devil and la Salamanca.

According to the Santiagueño version, la Salamanca is a place where people go to make a deal with the devil (Zupay) in exchange for knowledge and powerful gifts. La Salamanca is usually a cave in the mountains. Zupay may teach the initiate the musical arts, such as playing the guitar or other instruments, dancing, horse breaking and training, or the evil arts of brujería (witchcraft).Tradition tells that if you hear the music of la Salamanca, you will fall into an evil life, full of fear and horror.People of good faith can avoid falling into the temptation of the Zupay by carrying a rosary. It is said that those whohave made a pact with the devil can be spotted because they cast no shadow.

“As always, there are many versions of this legend, but most of them agree on the main points. This story was well known in Spain during the 14th and the 16th centuries and was so famous that it went with the first Spanish sailors who took part in the colonization of Central and South America. This is why … people still refer to … caves and dark places as “Salamancas.” [spanishinspain.blogspot.com.ar]

While I was writing about la Salamanca an old Robert Johnson song came into my head. I remember stuff like that instead of people’s names and what I had for breakfast. Weird, right? Are you seeing a connection here between the singer and la Salamanca?

I got stones in my passway
And all my roads seem dark at night

– Robert Johnson, “Stones in My Passway”

[The following story is from Henry Goodman, excerpted from Vagabonding, Rolf Potts, June 26, 2015]

Meeting with the Devil at the Crossroads

Robert Johnson been playing down in Yazoo City and over at Beulah trying to get back up to Helena, ride left him out on a road next to the levee, walking up the highway, guitar in his hand propped up on his shoulder. October cool night, full moon filling up the dark sky, Robert Johnson thinking about Son House preaching to him, “Put that guitar down, boy, you drivin’ people nuts.”

Robert Johnson needing as always a woman and some whiskey. Big trees all around, dark and lonesome road, a crazed, poisoned dog howling and moaning in a ditch alongside the road sending electrified chills up and down Robert Johnson’s spine, coming up on a crossroads just south of Rosedale. Robert Johnson, feeling bad and lonesome, knows people up the highway in Gunnison. Can get a drink of whiskey and more up there.

Man sitting off to the side of the road on a log at the crossroads says, “You’re late, Robert Johnson.” Robert Johnson drops to his knees and says, “Maybe not.”

The man stands up, tall and black as the forever-closed eyes of Robert Johnson’s stillborn baby, and walks out to the middle of the crossroads where Robert Johnson kneels. He says, “Stand up, Robert Johnson. You want to throw that guitar over there in that ditch with that hairless dog and go on back up to Robinsonville and play the harp with Willie Brown and Son, because you just another guitar player like all the rest, or you want to play that guitar like nobody ever played it before? Make a sound nobody ever heard before? You want to be the King of the Delta Blues and have all the whiskey and women you want?”

“That’s a lot of whiskey and women, Devil-Man.”

“I know you, Robert Johnson,” says the man.

Robert Johnson feels the moonlight bearing down on his head and the back of his neck as the moon seems to be growing bigger and bigger and brighter and brighter. He feels it like the heat of the noonday sun bearing down, and the howling and moaning of the dog in the ditch penetrates his soul, coming up through his feet and the tips of his fingers through his legs and arms, settling in that big empty place beneath his breastbone causing him to shake and shudder like a man with the palsy. Robert Johnson says, “That dog gone mad.”

The man laughs. “That hound belong to me. He ain’t mad, he’s got the Blues. I got his soul in my hand.”

A few more notes about the legend of Robert Johnson, the blues guitarist who supposedly made a pact with the devil to become the greatest blues guitarist of all time.Robert was the 11th (and illegitimate) child of a poor Mississippi family.He was 17 or 18 when he found out the name of his biological father, and he then took on his real father’s last name. Robert married at 19.Perhaps due to bad luck, as some say, his wife Virginia died in childbirth, losing the baby, too. She was only 16.

A few years later,Johnson made the mistake of fooling around with the wife of the owner of a club where he was playing.The outraged husband sent a bottle of poisoned whiskey to Robert’s table.Apparently Robert drank a fair amount of that whiskey, ’cause later that evening he stopped playing, walked outside, and passed out.He died three days or two weeks later, as the tale spins, from the strychnine-laced whiskey.

Everyone knows a deal’s a deal, especially if it’s a deal with el diablo. When your time runs out, you’re done.Robert didn’t collect a lot of time in this world, but the devil sure got his due. That’s the story of Robert Johnson, part history and part fiction.For me, the truest part is the mesmerizing sound of his soulful voice, the genius of his music and his technical skill on the guitar, for all of which he earned the title “King of the Delta Blues.”

I went down to the crossroad

fell down on my knees

I went down to the crossroad

fell down on my knees

Asked the lord above “Have mercy now

save poor Bob if you please”

– Robert Johnson, “Crossroad Blues”

[Check out this YouTube history in Spanish: Historias y Relatos – El Pacto de Robert Johnson]

Did we earn our Adventuresome Tourist badges on day 1? Yikes! Segue to another sketchy locationabout 30 miles away: La Falda.Home to the decrepit, deteriorating, notorious Hotel Eden, the world-famous Nazi vacation retreat and watering hole. Córdoba Day 2.

Hotel Eden is an enormous building… about the same size as the Hotel Palace.But you can’t book a room; it’s actually not habitable.The second floor has big holes in the floors and walls, so the guided tour only took us up the decaying stairs (that was scary!) to the 2nd floor landing.The hotel hasn’t been open for business – except guided tours – for many years.

view from the back

section of the ground floor

The main event was a long boring documentary about all the rich Germans who stayed there before the war.Albert Einstein did visit the hotel in 1925.It was widely rumored that Hitler was also a visitor but there is no supporting evidence.

Santos and his brother Einstein, 2017

During Einstein’s visit to Argentina he met with an Argentine physicist, Enrique Loedel Palumbo, who had written his doctoral thesis on the optical and electrical constants of sugar cane. Is that, like, what color is it and can it bite you back? According to Wikipedia, the two had a conversation about the differential equation of a point-source gravitational field, which resulted in a paper published by Loedel in Physikalische Zeitschrift.I’m guessing that was a German scientific journal.It’s claimed that this is the first research paper on relativity published by a Latin American scientist. You go, Enrico!

Enrique Loedel Palumbo, 1925

Another influential character, George Strausser Messersmith, was the U.S. ambassador to Austria, Cuba, Mexico and Argentina.Messersmith also served as head of the U.S. Consulate in Germany from 1930 to 1934, during the rise of the Nazi party. He was best known in his day for his controversial decision to issue a visa to Albert Einstein to travel to the United States.Good move for the USA! ICE, get a clue!

George Strausser Messersmith

As America’s consul general in Berlin in 1933, Messersmith wrote a dispatch to the State Department that dramatically contravened the popular view that Hitler had no consensus among the German people and would not remain in power, saying,

“I wish it were really possible to make our people at home understand how definitely this martial spirit is being developed in Germany. If this government remains in power for another year, and it carries on in the measure in this direction, it will go far toward making Germany a danger to world peace for years to come. With few exceptions, the men who are running the government are of a mentality that you and I cannot understand. Some of them are psychopathic cases and would ordinarily be receiving treatment somewhere.” [Wikipedia]

We enjoyed walking about the ruins of the pool and adjacent servants’ quarters. Guys on one side of the pool, girls on the other. How convenient is that? How about I swim over to your place later, baby? Our tour guide, noting the sparse accomodations of the maids who took care of the children of rich Germans, and their proximity to the equally spare quarters of the male wait staff, gave rise to amusing speculation about how much hanky panky was going on after hours under the noses of the fat cats.

The scariest part of the Nazi hotel tour, besides the mala onda (bad vibes – which apparently have at least an 80 year half-life), was the crowded squeeze of our tour group into a basement wine cellar full of empty wine bottles arranged into low walls on every side, kinda like the bones in the Paris Catacombs.Spooky.

The last and worst part of our 60 peso tour included a wine and cheese tasting in the bodega.A little taste was all there was.A 3 oz. plastic cup half full of an unidentifiable anemic red wine, and a piece of cheese literally no bigger than my pinky fingertip.No little toothpicks, no cute little umbrellas; 50 tiny cheese bits piled on a wooden board so you had to grab a morsel with your fingers, touching many other cheese bits in the process.Yikes!Where’s the city health inspector?Where’s the building code inspector?AWOL and for good reason.

After waiting 20 minutes in line for the formidable aperitif, we had to do a U-turn and leave the way we entered.There was only one staircase, and it was barely wide enough for 2.If there had been a fire or an earthquake, we would all have been buried under that low-ceilinged hell hole, like so many cans of bait.No wonder the municipality of La Falda washed its hands of the hotel, and left its care and upkeep in the hands of a park concession business: imagine Curry Village in Yosemite turned into a FEMA shelter.

We couldn’t wait to get the hell out of La Falda.Others seem to like it just fine… dozens of cafés and food joints lined the road up to Hotel Eden, and they were all jumping.We grabbed a parking spot, walked into a place across the street, found a quiet booth in the back, and zoned out. We took our sweet time consuming a plate of fries and cool drinks, basking in the A/C. (It was a hot day in La Falda.) When we finally made our way back to the rental car, we found a small dent in the front fender. Did some lurking evil spirit follow us back from the Nazi Hotel?

One of the young guys who works at the hotel spotted us trying to pop out the dent in the parking lot when we returned that evening. The next morning he brought over a dent restoration specialist friend. They restored the fender to near perfection in about 5 minutes… and didn’t charge us anything.Another star for the Palace Hotel!

On Córdoba Day 3 our first stop was El Cajón Reservoir, just a few kms north of La Cumbre. We spotted a dirt road leading towards the river that spills out of the reservoir to the south. We rattled along that first dirt road and finally got to the creek, but there was no place to park except sand dunes, and only one sketchy turnaround. Later we realized we could have just parked in the road and waded across the river. No problem blocking traffic at a dead end.

But I was a little shook up from all the big potholes and treacherous sandy spots.So we headed back to the highway and took our best shot at the next dirt road.Bingo!It seemed like a long ways and practically all washboard, but finally we found the river crossing.I parked on the other side, pointed in the return direction.I always like to be ready to get the hell outta Dodge; must be all those 007 movies I grew up watching.

Río Dolores diquecito El Cajón

We were delighted to find ourselves in a nearly empty riverside retreat with a few acres of natural lawn sloping gently down to the water.Families and kids were up and at it, splashing around in the water, and a couple of barbecues were already in high gear, making us hungry.As we walked upstream I was blown away by the number and size of my namesake trees along the river.Do you remember Kenneth Grahame’s famous children’s book, The Wind the the Willows? Almost all the characters are animals.: Ratty, Mr. Badger, Mole, Otter, Mr. Toad of Toad Hall, and a “mixed lot” of rabbits and squirrels, weasels and stouts.Nice to catch a glimpse into the willowy land of make-believe.

“Please, Ratty, I want to row!”

grandma willow

There was a little snack shack where we bought sodas and choripan. If you’ve never had a choripan I feel really sorry for you. Think Ray’s Own Brand Pork Sausage from San Luis Obispo, hot and juicy in a french roll with a little salsa criolla on top. Extreme yumminess. Actually they weren’t the best choripanes ever. That honor goes to the first one I ever tried, at an authentic gaucho asado in the middle of a day-long ride in Bariloche, in 2012.

Santos and I sat in the shade of a willow to eat our choripanes.Then we strolled upriver aways to get our bearings.We didn’t go in the water, cause we hadn’t brought towels or swim clothes, but we lounged contentedly in the sun, like a couple of cats.

Rio Dolores choripan shack

We eventually hit the road, cause we had a number of places we wanted to check out.We stopped in Los Cocos.It was perhaps once a quaint town but shows every sign of death by tourist trinket shop overdose. They have a pretty park that you have to pay to go in. It looked nice from the sidewalk, but we didn’t take the bait. You can also pay for a ski lift ride (el teleférico) that hauls you up and down the mountain. Instead we stopped for coffee in a quiet café that had a shady deck and a resident feline.That was the best of Los Cocos.

We continued north to Uritorco, a peak known for its healing energies, complete with a creek for swimming.It’s all private land so you have to pay for the privilege of river access.We paid the man, parked, and walked along the river a ways.There were lots of people camped there.We wanted to hike to the top, only about a half hour hike, but turns out it cost extra! We hit the road again.

I guess I’m used to the immense free, or nearly free, state, county and national parks we have in the U.S.The concept of private land on mountain tops seems odd.But we had ol’ Teddy Roosevelt and John Muir and Aldo Leopold.They set the standard for all time.

Rio Quilpo, San Marcos Sierra

Santos and I headed north again, this time to that quintessential hipster paradise and land of enchantment, San Marcos Sierra. A little ways off the beaten track, but not too hard to find. The roads of San Marcos Sierra are unpaved, but there is wifi, and I hear they’re putting in their first stoplight.

Like most colonial towns San Marcos Sierra is built around a big square. There’s lots of tall trees and a few patches of grass… some of it cannabis, judging from the lingering scent about town. San Marcos Sierra really is a hippie magnet. The local economy depends on apiculture (bees and honey), olives, goat cheese, and tourism.You can rent a room, a tent, a sleeping bag.The beach along Rio Quilpo is a big draw. We saw hippie grandmas herding their grandkids to the beach and back. Reminds me of California beaches in the sixties and seventies, minus the sand.

Río Quilpo swimming hole

We had coffee and medialunas at a cute place in the shade across from the church. I read that the local environment is pure and unspoiled. They probably have a town ordinance prohibiting pesticides. That explains the clouds of flies buzzing around everywhere. Nice idea but things can get out of hand in that tropical heat. We were under constant attack from the buzzing little black nano-drones. I always used fly spray on my horses – maybe that’s why my brain has more than a few crossed wires.

The Río Quilpo is crystal clear.

I guess the town looked a lot different 400 years ago.Amazing that this beautiful colonial church survived.

San Marcos Sierra church

church interior

We walked to the river and found a few rocks to sit on.Santos sat in the shade with his back against the riverbank, and I found a quiet spot below where I sat on a rock with my feet in the water, reading. There were whole families camping in tents above the riverbank, kids playing in the water.

reading Middlemarch by George Eliot

I had a lovely time reading by the river for a couple of hours, with my toes in the water.That alone was worth the journey.I’m not sure what Santos was up to, but it turns out he took a few surrepticious photos.Friends wanted to know what huge book I was reading.Middlemarch, by George Eliot (an English woman writer), published in the 1870s. I was reading it cause I heard it’s considered the greatest novel in the English language. But no, not my cup of tea. I found it monotonous and depressing, like a Downton Abbey episode that keeps repeating. Nowhere near as good as the novels of Jane Austen. If you’re into 18th century British women’s literature, I did enjoy this good critical comparison of both novelists: “Without Austen, No Eliot,”Rebecca Mead, The New Yorker,Jan. 28, 2013.

Later we walked into a few shops looking for algarrobo flour for Santos’ homemade bread.They grind the algarrobo pods into a delicious dark brown flour.In San Marcos Sierra we parked the car, walked around town, splashed in the river and no one charged us anything.Way to go! Santos wanted to try the locally brewed beer, but the pub was closed for mid-day siesta.Wow. This town is nothing if not laid-back. We had to be satisfied with a photo of the Quilpo microbus, and a glimpse into the Hippie Museum.

Museo Hippie … Peace and Love!

We got a bit lost heading back to La Cumbre that evening.Blame it on all that lovely sunshine making algarrobo guacamole of our brains.

On Day 4 we spent a couple of hours swimming and lounging around by the pool. Later on we went for a 10K ride.Late afternoon drifted into sundown as we climbed up the high ridges.For the first hour or so we followed twisting dirt roads wide enough for vehicles.We forded a lot of creeks.Our horses were amazing.They had one speed, and it was non-stop.They never slowed down unless asked.Higher up we forded stony streambeds and clambered up rocky, slippery trails; those criollo horses never missed a beat.Best trail horses I’ve ever rode, and I’ve been riding since I was a wee one!Santos, who grew up playing hooky in the dirt streets of the barrio, had no riding experience whatsoever.But after the first half hour he was sitting his horse really well. A natural, that guy.Santos is the Man.

our horses Zamba & Gurí

We rode past ranches, a polo field, and 3 or 4 drop-dead gorgeous homes straight out of the magazines.We were met with plenty of attention by 3- and 4-packs of dogs.The horses were unfazed.

polo field @ Estancia La Triana

Our trusty guide, Pedro, had the keys to multiple gates crossing private ranches, enabling us to continue ever onward and upward.Climbing the last few switchbacks up to a trail along the ridge, I spotted a faint crescent of moon topping a far ridge. The rising full moon gleamed incandescently. The moon’s powerful presence hijacked me to another realm of consciousness, where I remembered just how small and insignificant we humans are in the grand scheme of things. I felt as if I was light years away from civilization. A magical moment, indeed.

The moon lit our way as we rode along the hills and ridges above La Cumbre. By the time our horses began to pick their way back down the rocky paths it was getting late. The meandering trails turned into broad, well-travelled dirt roads leading to town. We walked back to our hotel, dog-tired. We celebrated the great ride and moon viewing with shots of Tequila. We rested and showered and went out for midnight pizza at Rhapsody, a hoppin’ joint just across the street from the Hotel Palace. The sidewalk tables were all full but for one… the one that was waiting for us. We shared a Rhapsody specialty, pizza al fuego… with their special spicy jalapeño sauce. Así nos gusta!

Córdoba Day 5:Cuesta Blanca

The four of us renewed our mountain climbing skills the very next day.It was a long drive… almost 2 hours. A typical LA commute, right? We had to pass through the city of Carlos Paz, which we didn’t like much. We had already driven about an hour south towards Córdoba, and we needed a coffee break. We found a place to park, close to where I took this photo. Then we hoofed it 4 or 5 blocks to the main drag where we claimed a couple of tables at a sidewalk café. The good thing was we had a spot in the shade, and the waiter didn’t waste any time bringing our café con leche, jarrito, lágrima, café solo, cortado, etc. Argentine coffeespeak: it’s another language. But Carlos Paz was hypercrowded, noisy, full of traffic fumes and annoying trucks blasting promotions from loudspeakers. El infierno.

with las Gabys in Carlos Paz

We drove out of that hell hole all the way to Cuesta Blanca, the Hippie Beach or La Isla Hippie, as some call it.There are only two ways in.

First you have to drive up a steep, twisty, dusty dirt road for a few miles, till the road drops back down to a spot near the river.You hike to the dam, then uphill to the top of the dam – 5 minutes –where a guy paddles you upriver in his canoe to the beach landing.

Some folks don’t bother hiking in; they just splash around below the dam.

The second way in (or out) is a 40 minute hike up and over a steep hill; a snaky, rocky trail full of brush and boulders. We took the canoe. I love the slow, steady drifting along, riding the water. Easier than swimming and you can bring all your gear.

a glimpse of Cuesta Blanca from the top of the dam

Check out these horses! How beautiful is that?

Cuesta Blanca is an idyllic, laid back, no rules but respect others and pack out your trash kinda place. If you need to use the restroom you have to take a hike, ’cause this site is privately owned and wonderfully unspoiled. We swam, sunned, kicked back in the shade, lunched on salame and bread and cheese and drank vino tinto. A really cool place, and not in the guidebooks. It was las Gabys who knew how to get there.

Santos took this awesome shot

Playa Hippie from the other side, upstream

When you get to the top you’re rewarded with a view of the whole scene. Quite a few people bring tents and kids and stay for days.

We paid 50 pesos apiece for the canoe ride, and returned via free climb, as you can tell in the above photo because the sun was setting when we left.None of us had thought to bring a flashlight… hey!We’re on vacation!We don’t need no stinkin’ flashlights!!

The light was fading as we hiked out, and we had to backtrack several times to find the trail. But we made it back to La Cumbre just fine, later that evening. The four of us went out for beer and empanadas, and I had my fruit smoothie. We had to put up with a karaoke bar on the sidewalk at the café next to our café, where we listened with amusement to the assorted bunch of nut cases who thought they could sing. That put us in an entertaining mood, and las Gabys wanted to take us to their new favorite bar around the corner from the Palace, la Biblioteca. They had been in there a few days before and the bartender had refused to make them Daquiris. “No es para vosotras, señoritas,” he told them, “Es un trago muy macho.” (“It’s not for you, ladies,” he told them, “It’s a very macho drink.”) We decided to head over to laBiblioteca and show them how girls can throw down tequila shots. Mission accomplished.Delicious with a good kick in the ass!

Our last two nights in Córdoba we stayed in the capital, right in the historic district. We ate out at nice cafés and restaurants and walked all over town. I used to dread getting lost in strange cities, but I’m beginning to realize it can be a fine and passionate experience of the here and now. And if I have someone to keep me company I don’t end up in a panic with tears running down my cheeks.

Lately I’ve been reading too much news, and none of it is encouraging. The loud little voice inside my head wants to scramble off the map and hide out somewhere for a couple of milennia. A few Portuguese on the other side of the Río de la Plata found their patch of paradise back in 1680, on a beautiful little spit of sand surrounded by water. Manuel Lobo, founder of the colony, should be recognized as the inventor of modern soccer because he and the Spanish kept kicking ownership of la Colonia del Sacramento back and forth until 1828, with Brazil and Spain coaching.

Full steam ahead to the 21st century. Colonia became a UNESCO World Heritage Site and thus attained tourist trap status, but managed to maintain its sweet and idyllic vibe, keeping the plastic and trashy side of commercialism at bay.

The polka dot place serves free art with every meal, and plenty of locally crafted cerveza. A chopp [pronounced like the o in slope] is a draft beer; a choperia is a pub.

In Colonia you can fish or picnic under a ceibo,

or grab a cold one at the Casa Grande.

There’s an ancient stone lighthouse (el faro) that you can climb up for the panoramic view,

and cool vistas to the south, looking across the river towards Buenos Aires.

The Basilica del Santísimo Sacramento was built by the Portuguese in 1808.

We stayed at the Posada Don Antonio, which has a lovely breakfast room and a beautiful patio and pool.

From there it’s a two minute walk to a quiet abandoned cala (cove),

and just past it, a block or two from the water’s edge, you pass the old map of Colonia, embedded in a wall.

The dock, on the sheltered side of the peninsula, was warm and sunny the day we visited.

We had a snack at the polka dot place, in the shade of an ancient sycamore.

Fast track to Montevideo, the capital of Uruguay. Montevideo has an historic district, la ciudad vieja, and parts of it are worth seeing.

We took a tour of the neoclassical Teatro Solis, built in 1856. Beautiful inside and out! It belongs to the city now, and they have done much to repair and restore it. The list of world renowned singers, dancers and musicians who lit up the stage there is absolutely mind-blowing: Sarah Bernhardt, Enrico Caruso, Arturo Toscanini, Ana Pavlova, Margarita Xirgu (actress and friend of Federico Gárcia Lorca), Rudolf Nureyev, Josephine Baker, actresses Lola Membrives and Eleonora Duse, dancers Isadora Duncan and Tórtola Valencia, Astor Piazzolla, and Italian actor and director Vittorio Gassman.

There’s a couple of French style Baccarat crystal chandeliers inside which even I, lover of funky ranch and mission style, was drooling over.

While the Big Baccarat might feel quite at home in the new winter white house (if it could stand the company) it would be be seriously slumming in my dream fixer-upper:

Oops! Did I unconsciously lapse into an alternative reality? I didn’t see that comin’… did you?

The tall white building in the background, across the plaza from the old customs house, is home to the mercado del puerto … where you can buy fruits and veggies, beef and freshly caught fish, and all the other stuff you’d rather not buy at the supermarket. We did go to the supermarket a couple of times, and it was a nightmare. It was small, super jammed (the aisles were narrower than the legroom in economy class) and an altogether unpleasant experience.

The old customs house is still beautiful:

Back of the old customs house is the river, where a couple of pitiful boats were tied up. We went for a sunset happy hour cruise, live tropical music on deck. I was hoping for a cocktail to go with the tropical beat, like a Mojito or a Daiquiri, but to my dismay they only serve beer and soft drinks. I guess they don’t want customers drinking, dancing and falling overboard. So who’s gonna feed the fish?

The bronze horseman in Plaza Zabala is Bruno Mauricio de Zabala, founder of the city, who no doubt wrested the land single-handed from a bunch of native fishermen who were tragically underinformed vis-a-vis the use of explosive powders in modern colonial warfare.

We heard rumors of a milonga at a place called La Pérez, and we found it, but there hadn’t been a milonga there for a really long time. However, checking the local milonga listings, La Perez is still happening, but at a place called Lo de Maria, on a different night.

Undaunted, though it was Sunday, we did find a milonga: Joventango, at Mercado de la Abundancia. Calle Aquiles Lanza 1290 esq San Jose. 9:30 pm – 2 am.

The developed part of Montevideo, aka the banking district, rumored to be the Latin American version of a money laundering automat, like the Caymans, contrasts starkly with years of mismanaged and stalemated development. Oops! I forgot that’s called progress.

Reminds me of Texas: saving unborn lives is a top priority, or so they say; but once those babies are born, hells’ bells kid, you’re on your own! No guarantee of education, housing or healthcare or jobs… but you can carry a gun. Here in Montevideo the ubiquitous A/C units look like a blight of tin boxes on the facades of almost every building. When was the last time you bought a new car that didn’t come with air conditioning?

Thankfully the local stevedores still have a labor union. The average daily pay is better than the minimum wage in Mexico. Impressed?

If you think President Ban/Trump is going to support the higher minimum wages the AFL-CIO or AFW will be asking for when they build all those new auto factories they’ve promised in Michigan, guess again. Maybe they’ll be relocated to Uruguay, now that Mexico won’t have us. ¡Pobre México, tan lejos de Díos, tan cerquita a los Estados Unidos! (Poor Mexico, so far from God, so close to the U.S.)

The “historic district” of Montevideo is block after block of hopelessly rundown and deteriorating buildings. Such a shame.

Rumor has it that when the government expropriated most of the properties in la ciudad vieja, it was given to the military generals, who kept it but didn’t keep it up. Here you see the results. This story was told to us by someone who’s family has been living in the same house continuously for over 100 years. And now I’ve probably said too much.

I was on a bus one day going downtown and I noticed about 6 or 7 blocks of wonderful murals, all on Sanchez de Bustamonte, in the neighorhood of the children’s hospital. So I made some time to walk that neighborhood, which is not far from my barrio, and I took lots of photos. I didn’t have much success with my investigation of the murals’ history, but it is obvious from the artists’ signatures and notations, along with the content and style of the works, that credit for the art goes to the children, and friends and families of the children, who received services in the hospital and its clinics.

la doctora felíz

I ‘ve always loved doing art with kids, and one of my dreams is to open a children’s art gallery and working studio where kids can learn to make art. Of course all children, given the simplest of resources and a good dose of encouragement, will do just that, with little prompting.

sueña con colores

I want to dedicate this blogpost to all the primary school teachers out there, who wake early every day and dedicate years of service helping children the world over to master the tools they need to build useful, productive lives.

om…..

As a former kinder teacher myself, I have always been happily startled by the creativity of little ones… always drawing, painting (outside, please!), inventing with whatever materials come into their little hands, making their own imaginative toys and a great lovely mess in the process!

When children begin to put pencil to paper, they start off with scribbles which eventually become letters and words and illustrations.

reading stimulates the imagination

Kids begin to read and write at an early age, and the learning curve spikes upward dramatically after they master the basics. Pretty soon they’re writing notes and cards and lists, being inventive and showing a great deal of focus, intention and follow-thru. I won’t go into a speech about it, but suffice to say it isn’t an accident that the lucky ones who have no access to tv or video games or computers at home become the earliest and most fluent readers and writers. Their creativity is not held captive, nor is their brain development put on hold, unlike millions of small children who sit, passive and expressionless, watching pixels on a screen instead of engaging their environment with all 5 senses.

pointillista

Apparently there’s no harm allowing children to watch an occasional kid flick. Isolationism runs counter-productive to healthy parenting. I heard there’s a new trend called paleo-parenting which I think was the norm a hundred years ago. “Outside, all of you! Don’t come back till supper time!” That was the mantra I grew up with. Freedom to roam the streets, the woods, the creek… to develop one’s powers of observation: bugs, rocks, leaves, bird nests, tree trunks, coyotes, squirrels… whatever moves. And hey, what about the beach? What a breathtaking world that is!

are we having fun yet?

Some delightful parents of my acquaintance let their kids check out a movie per week from the local library. Their amazing kids can be found engaging in creative play at all hours, building, measuring, hoisting buckets of water into the air using branches and a rope for a winch, reinventing the wheel a hundred times; painting, sculpting in dirt, mud and sand mixed with water… snaring small toys or live birds with a string, a stick and a cardboard box (as we did as children) … reenacting favorite stories using stuffed animals and dolls… how much fun can you have when your brain is not programmed by television?

Rudyard Kipling’s Jungle Book

I almost forgot to mention that the aforementioned parents of my acquaintance each speak several languages, which as you know is a kind of connect-the-dots-game for the developing brain.

the ocean with big sun and little messages

It’s getting late. My brain sometimes runs out of words at 4 am. But there is still a herd of pictures waiting to be run into the corral.

Impressionist

The above doesn’t look like children’s art to me, but I like it… urban impressionist?

Mary Poppins… wow

Mary Poppins, a children’s book by P.L. Travers, was about a magical English nanny. Originally published in 1934, Disney made it into a movie in 1964 – fifty years ago.

an artistic mishmosh with tree

I love this mural, though as a work of art it could be critiqued; and my best guess is that it was conceived and executed by a brilliant teenager. Apparently the monster lurking above was reworked to death.

Doña Primavera … a poem to our lady of Spring

At the upper left of the above mural a verse from “Doña Primavera,” a poem by Chilean poet Gabriela Mistral, is just barely visible.

La Pachamama

From the Earth who nurtures and heals us…

Importante dates that pass without realizing… the day you discover your future favorite author.

to the texts which lend us perspective on the world and our lives.

girl with donkey

This last mural reminds me of a Marc Chagall painting. Delicate, colorful, yet the violent sky, the sad girl clinging to a burro… the flowers don’t look too healthy, either. What does it all mean?

I am master of my fate, captain of my soul.

LAST MINUTE NOTE: Looking for a comfortable apartment for your visit to Buenos Aires? A good friend of mine from the states rents hers out when she’s not here. It’s in one of my favorite neighborhoods and has a big sunny balcony. You can check it out at: www.airbnb.com/rooms/4650379.

living room

bedroom

Let’s close with a photo from a curious and delightful day in La Boca.

In early October I dropped in on the City of Bridges to hear some great live tango orchestras. This year’s Portland Tango Festival showcased some fabulous live music: el Quarteto Alejandro Ziegler, and the Alex Krebs Orchestra. Alejandro Ziegler, on piano, evokes the sound of Pablo Ziegler, renowned Argentine pianist and composer who laid down lots of amazing tracks with Astor Piazzolla. Apologies up front: another reader informs me that Alejandro is NOT Pablo’s son. It appears that my milonguero friends here in Buenos Aires are misinformed. My apologies to all.

Pablo Ziegler worked intensively as Astor Piazzolla’s pianist from 1978 until the maestro’s retirement for health reasons in 1989. Ziegler’s playing style, both sharply percussive and metallically lyrical, is instantly recognizable to fans of tango nuevo. In 2003 Ziegler won a Latin Grammy for his amazing album Bajo Cero. Ziegler plays in the Jazz tradition, always improvising, arranging and rearranging his compositions on the fly, in the moment. He encourages musicians to find their own voice. His music is melancholy, evocative, far-reaching. It speaks directly to our hearts and souls: nos afecta profundamente, como una puñalada en el corazón. Opera has that effect on me too… the tears just come down, you can’t help it. Dancing a slow tango to Ziegler’s version of Oblivion or Soledad in the wee hours, well, it just doesn’t get any better than that, does it?

“I always tell musicians: You’re free to change whatever you like. I can give you some examples of the way to phrase, but if you feel something different, just play. Probably it’s fantastic. That’s one of the ways that I’m learning also from the musicians, too. Sometimes they’re playing and I like it that way. It’s a very open way to play music. If I bring some Beethoven piano concerto, everybody knows the way to play that kind of music, which is very strict. But with this music, we have to feel it and do something different. I’m giving them that chance.” (Pablo Ziegler, from an interview by Frank J. Oteri, Brooklyn, NY. June 13, 2014) (www.newmusicbox.org/articles/pablo-ziegler-making-the-music-dance/)

• The New Tango with Gary Burton, recorded live at the 1986 Montreux Festival

• The Central Park Concert recorded in 1987

The influence of Astor Piazzolla and Pablo Ziegler is unmistakeable in the sound of Quarteto Alejandro Ziegler. They absolutely knocked the walls down Sunday evening with their fabulous Buenos Aires sound!

Photos by Jerry Berggen, courtesy of “Tango Steps,” the newsletter of the Lincoln Tango Club, Lincoln, NE. (And he can dance, too!)

I can testify that there really IS tango in Nebraska, because one wintry night a couple of years ago, driving across country, I had a few nice tandas at a milonga in a really cool urban space in Lincoln. (Note to Self: don’t EVER do that again. The drive, I mean.)

The Alejandro Ziegler Quartet headed to Lincoln to play the following weekend. I’ve got relatives just across the border in Indian Country, so I’ve been there many times. Have you ever seen Carhenge?

Carhenge

You, me and a few spaceship-loads of aliens on invisible tours of Planet Earth! Uh-oh, am I getting wonky again? Back to the subject at hand: the phenomenal Quarteto Alejandro Ziegler.

These guys were coherent, fine-tuned, on a roll, in other words, maravillosos!I’m really kicking myself that I didn’t buy one of their CDs. Uff! I couldn’t find them on itunes either. Idiota!

The Alex Krebs Orchestra rocked Norse Hall to a huge and appreciative crowd on Saturday night. Love the singers, especially the guy with the Dalí moustache. They sound better than ever. The Portland tango community is lucky to have such a great house band.

Alex Krebs Orchestra

Alex has his own milonga called Tango Berretín.

It’s a lovely space, inside and out.

Alex’s Orchestra playing Berretin Tango Club.

Guille & Mayumi taught at the Tangofest

Liselot is a capable teacher, especially for newbies.

Here’s what I liked about the Portland Tango Fest:

•fabulous space: Norse Hall

•great live music

•excellent DJs, especially Dan Boccia from Anchorage

•simultaneous traditional and alternative milongas

•evening milongas started at 9 or 10 and went to 6 am… yeah night owls!

•classes started at 11:00 am, for obvious reasons. I mean, who really gets up for a 9:00 am class or workshop?!? pas moi!

•there were some very cool tango clothes and shoes for sale in the lounge

•there were 2 or 3 classes going simultaneously. Beginners had their own workshops tailored to their learning styles. This is a good thing.

•Did I forget to mention, LOTS of FABULOUS Tango dancers! Thanks to all of you for the great tandas, you KNOW who YOU are!!!

The downside:

•The gala evening demos were less than impressive. Comedy, acrobatics and tango selfies are no substitute for style and elegance. I think our traveling tangueros need to head home every now and then to remember how it’s done in Buenos Aires.

La Nacional

FEEL the connection… to your partner, to the floor, to the other dancers, to the music, to the musicians, to your own heart. FEEL the floor. FEEL the music. FEEL the emotion… disconnect your thoughts and let sound be your oxygen… just Breathe.

And what’s not to like about Portland in the early Fall? The sun sparkled on the river radiating perfect warmth throughout the city — not too hot, not too cold. You didn’t need a jacket, except maybe leaving the milongas in the early morning cool. The adorable streetcars and Powell’s City of Books were every bit as wonderful as ever.

Mt Hood glowing above a sparkly Portland night

Bye bye, Portland, till next time!

parrot guy

A few days later I found myself on the east coast suffering the throes of tango withdrawals. Needless to say, I wasn’t in Miami, that throbbing hotspot of tango cool. No, I was just a senseless misplaced pawn on a giant Monopoly board. I’m still in recovery from visiting the Sunshine State. One is bombarded with hyper-signage everywhere, and I mean everywhere. PR on steroids. The land of Madmen from Planet Dollar $ign. No cool cafés, no quaint cobblestoned villages, just shopping, greasy fast food, gated beachfront properties, Big Box churches and Big Box stores. The beach is beautiful, to be sure, but driving is the only way to get around… unless you’ve got a beak and a pair of wings. And the tango scene in northern Florida can only be described as, well… pitiful? nonexistent? Sorry, Sunshine!

Please excuse the nonsense bubbling up from the uber-consciousness waystation I like to call my mind…. The only thing I wanted to take with me from Florida was Mai Tiki Bar on the Cocoa Beach Pier.

How cute is that! And, a couple of adorable kids!

This gatorade fest I did NOT want to take with me.

Are they on Shrooms? Zoloft? Marie Callendar?

I touched down at Ezeiza two weeks ago, shifting into high gear once more, back to the Mecca of Tango: Buenos Aires. Highlights from my next post:

We’ve opened a café of our own right here in the backcountry of California’s Central Coast. This little backwater halfway between Frisco and LA is its own kind of gorgeous, straight out of Steinbeck: rolling hills covered with vineyards and statuesque oaks; cottonwoods and sycamores along the creeks flowing into the Pacific Ocean and the mighty Salinas.

Salinas River

Atascadero, once so sleepy it rolled over and played dead every night at 6, now practically teems with amorphous protomorphium swimming blindly upstream through the marine layer into they know not what or wherefore (picture 3 pm when junior get-highers get out of jail free). But no worries, we are all about helping our fellow pleistozoic critteralium evolve and merge into the more convoluted streams of higher consciousness, otherwise known as twenty-first century artsy wine-guzzling nouveau-cui$ine Culture with a Capital C.

6005 El Camino Realcarltonbakery@gmail.com

There was at last count one really good restaurant in our three-block downtown: Fig; another one in nearby Santa Margarita: The Range (as in, “Home, home on the Range”)(*if you don’t love classic western writer Will James I’m not talking to you anymore!); one great burger joint: Sylvester’s Big, Hot n’ Juicy; an awesome homestyle Mexican place (El Compadre) next to a fine bakery (Hush Harbor); and a classic dive: the newly reborn Whisky n’ June. (Never trust a man who doesn’t like whisky and women!)

yeah baby!

Hmmm… where was I going with all this? Floating facedown in those muddy waters of swirling upwardly mobile sometimes divinely-inspired (as in a chocolate croissant) sense and sensibility, was I? Oh, yeah, downtown Atascadero also has…

The ARTery

a hangout frequented by cool artistic types that boasts a scandalous history of NIMBY activist-inflaming murals painted by folks from that evil southern city of the Fallen Angels. And the shining star of A-Town, the Rotunda…

City Hall

… a wannabe colonial domed and pillared squarish brick city hall structure (reminiscent of an abandoned feminine implant from 20,000 feet up) casting its authoritative gaze on the strangely-named “Sunken Gardens”: our courthouse square minus the courthouse. “Sunken” perhaps refers to the meaning of atascadero in Spanish: a place where one gets stuck in the mud, a kind of hell hole. A close friend’s husband, born and raised in Puerto Rico, told me that when he was a kid, his mom would yell at him to clean his room ‘cause it was an “ATASCADERO!”

Heck, even Oprah’s been here!

Atascadero has too strip malls, too many Starbucks, too many stoplights, and nine too many exits off the 101. Just another California town basking in the warm fall sunshine. Lord, please bring us some rain sometime soon! Which is why we couldn’t come back to God’s Country without bearing special gifts gleaned from our 2-1/2 year tango-crawl through the wilderness of the civilized world.

the newly reborn Carlton Café

a room at the Carlton… up above the bakery!

How much time could YOU fritter away lounging in a great café in a great city like New York, Paris, Buenos Aires, Barcelona?

Café Tortoni, Buenos Aires

So how ‘bout we don’t call it frittering. Call it a waste of time if you will, but a QUALITY waste of time (oink oink KPIG). How many hours could YOU spend sitting around drinking a velvety latte or a structurally perfect macchiato? I sure can… and I don’t know where the time goes but it does keep going…have you noticed time passes on the left? ‘Cause it’s always going faster than we are. And left is the evil side: “a sinistra” (to the left). When Dante descends into hell, his path winds down to the left. Counterclockwise. Got it?

hmmm… did we take the wrong turn?

Picture yourself sitting in a nice comfy chair in a cool, beautiful wabisabi space… quality time, chill time. Time to think, to dream, to get inspired; to power thru your daily in-box, google this’n’that, check your FAQs, consult your horrorscope… fire off a few nasty grams to the big cheese… wait a sec… don’t toss your luck to the winds and ruin your forecast! Breathe, do some yogalates, take time to visit with a good friend, take your mom out to lunch, celebrate your cumpleaños in a great café… dancing tango, of course.

Confiteria Ideal

So, you may be wondering, where IS she running off to now with this late night verbal soirée? Just explaining to y’all why we HAD to bring a little taste of café-culture home with us, in the form of delicious artisan breads and pastries, high-octane coffee, and a beautiful wabisabi space for dancing tango!

Salsa break at La Milonga del Carlton

The tall relentless guy in my world just HAD to open his own bakery, so he could bake the bread and bring home the bacon. A place to wine and dine friends ‘cause he loves to feed hungry hordes.

Courtney’s Chocolate Bread

still life with 5-grain loaf, cheese & olives

And a place where he and his buddies could stand around and spin lies, surrounded by lots of dough, solving the world’s problems over and over again, day after day. Luckily those problems never get solved (you’ve noticed that, too?)… so they rework possible outcomes, endlessly reposition themselves… when people consume caffeine they can talk all day long!

boy can they talk!

Besides, we were drinking so much coffee out, one day he did the math and decided it would be cheaper to open our own café! Now he’s wondering about that math… duh!

2+2=22?

Must be the faulty DNA we all share. Didn’t those wiser-than-us extraterrestrials toss all the rejects on our planet? Where did YOU think politicians came from?

If you dance tango in the U.S., sooner or later you’re going to gravitate to Portland, like a small planet unexplicably attracted to Saturn or Jupiter… a pull that can cause a small planet like Earth to… flip its axis! A Tango mecca like Portland exerts an influence on everything in its gravitational field. Where else besides Buenos Aires or Paris can you hear a musician playing Piazzolla on the street corner?

So what’s there to do in Portland? Like, Tango every night!

birthday dance at Norse Hall

The Portland Tango scene is really awesome. Partly because the music is traditional (but I miss those Buenos Aires salsa breaks) and also because it’s accessible: no more than 15 minutes to any of the milongas.

Saturday night milonga at Berretín

Did I mention the outstanding DJs spinning classic tango every night of the week? …like tango DJ Joe Leonardo. He also creates retro black and white tango films. (tangosilentfilms.com).

DJ Joe Leonardo & girlfriend Hannah

Monday night you can dance in the dough… next to the vault!

Fort Knox North

in the old U.S. Treasury building downtown

The Treasury Milonga replaces the PPPA milonga, which was at a really cool location on the east side of the river. Kinda wabi-sabi, ¿qué no?

What I just don’t get about alternative tango is, how can you call it Tango if it’s not TANGO music? Is Tango a dance, or is it a genre of music? Can you separate the two? We went to check out the Wednesday milonga, and when I asked if the music was alternative, aka Nuevo, the doorman told me “it’s so far alternative it’s not even tango.” Wow! For an interesting discussion on traditional vs. nuevo, see The Rise and Fall of Tango Milonguero Style at tangovoice.wordpress.com. But we are so far from Buenos Aires, and so close to……. the Dark Kingdom.

beautiful Portland evening

Thursday nights at Norse Hall are unforgettable… what a great milonga!

Sunday evenings you can tango at Lenora’s Ballroom: beautiful space, friendly atmosphere, and all the traditional tango you need to get your endorphin fix for the night and all your mental faculties gratuitously upgraded and ready to face the work week.

urban chic tango venue

“Tango invites you to become the protagonist of an ongoing story, which is danced with another through a mutual improvisation that depends on a deep, body-to-body communication, an entwinement of the spirit and the limbs. When you dance it, if you want to dance it well, you immediately understand that it is perhaps the only dance that requires the equal participation of both dancers in order to be fluid. Thus its difficulty, complexity and sensuality…. Tango anyone?” [Velleda C. Ceccioli, Psychology Tomorrow, May 2013].

a good connection is essential…

A foto-cortina from a visit to the Peninsula (SF Bay Area). I know most of my readers will recognize Ben, el Rey de la Milonga, and tango teacher Igor Polk:

having’ fun!

Cecilia & Willow making’ friends while the guys dance!

OK, and finally, coming straight to you from my spies in Buenos Aires:

Advice for newbie dancers heading to BAires: milonga tips, codes, and what you need to know to get dances!

milonga at Aires Tangueros, Rivadavia 1392

An Anonymous Tanguera speaks:

The reason guidebooks and friends contradict each other is that there is no way to answer your questions. Where would men be more likely to ask a stranger to dance? What kind of stranger? There are so many factors that affect whether you will get asked: your appearance, your height, your level of dance, the confidence you project, the warmth you project, your style of dress… and so on. I go to two or three milongas a week, and at any one of them I might dance nonstop or I might never leave my seat. I’m the same person each time, but there may be fewer men I know one week… or maybe I’m projecting a different energy.

milongueras de BAires

Where do men who dance well go to dance? Maybe the men you consider good dancers are not the ones I would consider good. My friends don’t necessarily like the same leaders I do… we all have a different connection. In any case, it is not true that the afternoon milongas attract better dancers. I can’t think of an afternoon milonga that has a level of dance that matches some of the better night milongas. That said, I dance with some great leaders at afternoon milongas. It is sooo variable.

matinee milonga at La Ideal

Anyway, as a 35-year-old woman, especially if you are attractive and look younger than your age, you will get asked to dance often. Unless the day you go there happens to be dozens of other young, beautiful women… many of whom are already known by the men. That happens. The best thing to do if things look hopeless is to go to another milonga.

Milonga Viejo Correo

My best advice would be to not stress about it. You will get to dance. You will have a good time. You will be here for long enough to find your own favorites. Some little milongas del barrio are much more fun than the famous ones that all the tourists go to. I mean, I wouldn’t go to Niño Bien with a gun to my head!

I need to understand what style of dance you’re looking for. You mention “milonguero salon style,” which is really confusing. Milongas here are increasingly breaking down by age/style — unfortunate, but a reality. The young milongas are almost exclusively salon style… a more open embrace with more elaborate movements and adornments. Milonguero style is quite the opposite… very close embrace, with teeny movements (back crosses instead of ochos with pivot, for example) and almost no decorations. Since you said you liked Canning, I suspect you are looking for close embrace, but not true milonguero style.

A friend of mine likes a couple of young, salon style places… Villa Malcolm and Milonga 10. If you don’t usually dance salon, you may find them a bit intimidating (not knowing anyone and facing a lot of stunning 20-year-olds). As he says, La Viruta is good only very late… and yes, the good dancers all dance with each other.

good friends at Sunderland

An Anonymous Tanguero speaks:

I think that the key is to understand and respect the codes. If I see a woman who stands up after a cabeceo and looks for the man, I just don’t invite her: beginner and super banned.

If, when the tanda finishes, she stays talking with somebody on the dance floor, banned, too easy and I don’t want milongueras to think that I am fishing.

los Reyes del Tango en la Viruta

I also suggest you study the dance floor. It’s easy to see who is who. If nobody knows you, nobody wants to take the risk. If the milongueros see you dancing with somebody they respect, they are going to invite you.

milongueras de la Viruta

If you don’t want a coffee invitation, go home early. At El Beso, after 1:30 nobody dances if there is nothing after, because then is when they invite, they expect to be invited.

El Beso – I love the walls!

Basic but important, don’t dance more than 2 tandas in one night with anybody. Since I have a family I prefer to dance only one tanda per night so there are no misunderstandings.

no misunderstandings here!

You sit with women, and if a man invites himself to sit down next to you, look at him as if he’s raping his own mother. In other words, give him a dirty look and DON’T DANCE WITH THE PENDEJO!

who, me?

We have two reasons for inviting a new girl to dance: she is an outstanding dancer or she is super cute.

super cute!

La Viruta is more a place to hang out with friends, to continue dancing with people you know after other milongas close, or to look for a hook-up. If you are only interested in tango, it is best to enter when the entrance is waived between 2h30 and 3h30, since before you also have tandas of rock and salsa. At La Viruta, men typically do not cabeceo, but walk around and ask women to dance. The guys that ask women to dance are typically not the ones hanging out with friends, so you have to judge if they are the kind that looks for a hook-up, and if you want to dance with them. It is normal to say “no, gracias” if you are not interested. Don’t go to La Viruta on Thursdays, there are no tandas. And never dance after 5:30. The lights are off for a couple of seconds just before la Cumparsita.

Orquesta El Afronte en la Maldita Milonga, Perú 571

Tango is the same all over the world but dancing in Buenos Aires is different from anywhere else you have ever been.

Teatro Colón

house band at Café Vinilo, Gorriti 3780

Be friendly, smile, try not to dance with the vultures, be open to new experiences, have fun and leave plenty of room in your suitcase for shoes! You are going to have a great time!